What is Black Friday parking?

Cyburbian Plus

#BlackFridayParking is a nationwide event drawing attention to the harmful nature of minimum parking requirements which create a barrier for new local businesses and fill up our cities with empty parking spaces that don’t add value to our places.

Each year on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, people all across North America will snap photos of the (hardly full) parking lots in their communities to demonstrate how unnecessary these massive lots are. Participants upload those photos to social media with the hashtag #blackfridayparking.

Cyburbian

Not that I'm a fan of parking minimums since most stores can figure out adequate parking on their own, but this doesn't really work either. If you're truly looking for peak you need to find the peak Target or Walmart in the community and take a picture during the peak shopping hour. I'm sure these guys got their pictures in the afternoon when most people have already raided the store in violent scenes of anarchy to get that new 100' plasma tv for $99. Besides, I have better things to do than take pictures of half empty parking lots like get 1/2 off on kids clothes at the mall that had a full parking lot. Except the back side where no one parks.

Cyburbian

This isn't usually about zoning parking requirements, or even about what retailers perceive as their parking needs. It's actually a marketing tool for retail developers and their tenants - they want people to see LOTS of FREE parking in FRONT of their stores. Way more than is actually used. It's a requirement for lots of retailers.

So relaxing the zoning minimum, or showing developers or their tenants data about Black Friday usage, is all a little beside the point. They like having easily visible vacant parking in front of their doors, because they believe it brings in shoppers.

The only effective response, which is a non-starter in many cities, is a parking maximum.

Cyburbian

This isn't usually about zoning parking requirements, or even about what retailers perceive as their parking needs. It's actually a marketing tool for retail developers and their tenants - they want people to see LOTS of FREE parking in FRONT of their stores. Way more than is actually used. It's a requirement for lots of retailers.

So relaxing the zoning minimum, or showing developers or their tenants data about Black Friday usage, is all a little beside the point. They like having easily visible vacant parking in front of their doors, because they believe it brings in shoppers.

The only effective response, which is a non-starter in many cities, is a parking maximum.

I'm starting to see more zero parking in commercial\residential sites, especially within a mile of transit stops but even in areas beyond that. Anything mandated in code results in more parking than necessary, so the city has been more relaxed in recent years in granting approval except when parking minimums are used as a NIMBYism tactic. As we all know, there is a cost associated with providing parking and it looks like, at least round these parts, that developers have taken note and are not providing any more than what they need.

Related... could ride sharing services one day changing the calculus on parking needs?

Cyburbian

Here in Fort Worth, new developments don't usually have much of a problem meeting minimum parking requirements, but there are several areas of town- Downtown, the Near Southside, etc.- that involve redevelopment of older properties and a lot of the time there isn't enough parking, either because the building use is changing or because cars simply weren't as popular when the area was first developed ~100 years ago. One of the more common variances in those areas is to have fewer than the required parking spaces and/or to "share" with an adjoining business.